Nadeshda -- A Found Poem

From the memories of Arthur Koestler in Invisible Writing,

Chapter Ten pg. 90-109

Nadeshda's words are mine and all the rest, are exactly Koestler's, edited and rearranged but unchanged

I.

TIFLIS

Short circuit

The lights out in the sleeping car

A girl entered the compartment followed

By a tall officer of the Red army.

Slim, tailored black suit

Brown hair which shimmered

In the light of the candle

You looked at us

And looked

A profile of classic haughty purity,

The vaulted forehead and chiseled lips

Of a Greek youth,

But a disturbing contrast between

Profile and frontal view.

En face the inhuman

Features had a touching

Wistful quality

“Excuse us, wrong compartment,” I said

out of the darkness

The pair left

With a nod and a bow, completely out of place

In the drab proletarian world.

I slept with a guilty, aching nostalgia

for the world

the decaying bourgeoisie,

Where women were

Graceful, smelt of scent,

and spent hours in their bathtubs.

And the next morning in the corridor

We stood in silence at the window

Why did you not speak to me then? I never believed in your shyness.

Thus started

The saddest affair of my lifetime.

Her head bent over the tea glass,

The eternal romantic deviation

“Going to Baku?” you asked me, when I sat down

in the dining car

as if any other place

lay at the end

of the line

black bread, salted herrings, vodka, tea,

again red caviar

zakushka

She spoke French with that melodious Russian drawl

That is the only legitimate maltreatment of the the French language

I recited for you passages of Pushkin and Mayakovsky

And you made me laugh

Behind her gayness

The impenetrable reserve

Of the jeune fille de bonne famille

You said you thought I was an actress or a ballerina, but

“The Water Board position assures one a quieter life,” 

I replied, sure that you, of all people, 

Would understand 

Some of us must remain unnoticed.

She constantly widened her eyes in surprise

Leaned in to me

Leaned in

Her pupils wide and so dark

I asked you many questions about the cities beyond Russia

The long plains sped by

in horizontal geography, 

each window frame identical

To the last -- you looked away

I suddenly began to see her

As a sick child tied

To its bed by some paralytic disease

You had been to a party I could never attend, 

In gleaming rooms a dream

Of evening gowns and fragile fabric.

I wore a sweater with a silver label,

traded to me by a traveler from Geneva.

You laughed and promised me silk stockings.

I knew it for a wish and a lie

II.

BAKU

Two grey rooms,

A sofa where she slept

The aunt devoid

Of curiosity lace

at her neck, perfect French,

served tea 

And we walked out together.

I was so proud of that green sweater

Red shooes, the suede only a little scuffed

I took your arm in my small radiance

The next day I met Werner

In line

Waiting for red caviar.

A crippled shoulder, a sweet weasel grin

A refugee story I did not believe,

But had the thrilling thought

My new friend was a Comrade from the Apparat.

Within a week I had his story

Over vodka at my Inturist room:

He survived after the war

In France and Belgium

Killing cats and selling the skins for bread,

Until given local liquidation duties by the Party-Apparat.

Of these murders he spoke without emotion.

But you told me of the Weasel's dreams: 

 Milk-seeping eyes of dead cats.

“Your friend,” Werner said

“I have asked my Nalchik about your girl’s Aunt

and my boss laughed and said “Staraya, sta-raya spionka --

An old, old spy."

And Nadeshda?

“Under observation.”

How could you be such a fool, dear one?

You, having escaped Hitler

in the luck of the night

rushing here on a Stalin invitation.

You led him to me.

I could not believe the shuffling aunt was really a spy.

If Werner met my girl he would see

The absurdity.

And that, of course, was precisely what he wanted.

I couldn’t tell her what Werner was.

That would be a breach of Party discipline

And he had confided in me

His stories.

Of cats and of murder and of the smells

III.

It was an unhappy lunch

At a black-market restaurant

In spite of the shashlik, and the drinks

And the gypsies, unhappy.

She had refused to come at first,

But I could see the wistful little

Girl behind the classic profile,

Shimmering with curiosity and desire.

I discovered that the need to worship

May be stronger than desire.

There was a hush

As she wended her way between the tables 

With her floating

Weightless walk.

It was an unhappy lunch

The Weasel's eyes became rounder

Each time he looked at me

I became more frightened each time

I looked at you

She was frightened in the manner of the brave,

Head held a little higher.

A great stillness came over her

Body becalmed waiting for the axe to fall.

In Russia personal pride is not considered

A virtue it is not

A sin to be affable to those you fear.

The Weasel-boy remembered the old

Stations as soon as he saw me he

hated the way I held my fork.

I hated the way I held my fork,

but I lifted it anyway

And he watched my mouth

And you watched my mouth

Trying to get Werner to relax,

I would demonstrate

We are not so different.

A mistake 

As Nadeshda became the lonely

Apex of our triangle.

I became increasingly base

Not conscious of the choice

Unthinking, automatic

This is the excuse for most betrayals

IV.

One does not think at a given moment

I am

Going

To be a traitor

One slides into treason by degrees

For ten days I tried to avoid you

I wasn’t home

But we walked together again

Laughed outside the cable office

I stuck the garbled cable

Into your pocket lining

Where you held my hand

When the cable came up missing

It did not seem important.

I did, however, report the incident

To Werner.

Denunciation is the Party’s Germ-

Warfare against the human spirit

The elementary duty of every Party member,

A test of loyalty.

You, beloved, you who never had

never again would

Denounce another

I would have died

For her readily and with a glow of joy.

During my seven years in the Communist Party

The only person I ever denounced or betrayed

Was me. Only me.

You gave me up, gave me away.

You introduced me and spoke of me,

You only walked away

Without me.

And the fact

That we could breathe together

That our kisses were flying pieces of

Unmistakable joy

Did you forget that or remember

And choose against it?

Do I want to know the category

Of leavetaking? My wolf, my white-toothed lover,

Your marks have faded from my breast

And left me more hungry

I cannot watch

The end

IV.

The explanation

Of the mystery, the betrayal

That missing cable

The most unbearable part

She whose proud profile would show no

Personal curiosity about me or my life

I was too proud to speak of them,

your previous lovers, your lovers

Whom I envied

Their silk pleated brassieres worn

And removed for your hand

Their morning coffee by a river soft

Buttered bread and a silver knife like

My mother must have used

Lovers who made you wait

While they tried on a hat

Silver pink gauze, perhaps, then

Looked at you with just the right angle

She, who betrayed curiosity only about the Jordan and the Nile,

Had pinched the cable to know

Whether it came from a wife or a mistress

In glittering Paris or Berlin with 

The curiosity of a child.

A child I betrayed the child

I took it thinking of your secrets, yes

Your secrets

Not those of which you write

But those of which you dream

I could not know then

That when the Terror came

A denunciation of this kind would be enough

To seal my Fate.

From my hotel window I could sometimes hear the little wail

Of the steam boat on the Caspian Sea

“Why don’t you tell her to get herself a job in some other town,”

Werner said on the last day;

Over worked spy-masters in small

Towns rarely bothered to forward such information.

I shook my head when you mentioned transfer,

thought of my Auntie among her last things

and the water ran down my cheek with the kitchen soap

on the second rinse.

That detergent cosmetic always made you sad for me.

Werner said with his little grimace

And his soft steady gaze

“Du wurdest gewogen und zu leicht befunden”

You have been weighed and found wanting.

We said good-bye in the rain on the sleet-mad dock

My kisses ever more insistent

Why, why, did you tell me to go

And did not ask me to follow.

In he darkness Nadeshda’s face looked to me the same

As it had in the sleeping car on that first night

Pure, severe, child-like

I waited for the redeeming whistle of the boat

Her hand now dead and lifeless

In your tweed pocket, my hand now a polite loan.

The last moment of these weeks in which

I became me you betrayed

My kindling heat

Drowned and with the ink

All running

Down the blue cable

Date flowing into the mud of Baku

And my almost-new suede shoes

Seeping vermilion

Ruined

Comments

[Semaphore]

The sweep is epic, and yet intimate, evoking the grandeur and immediacy of the Russian classics. A beautiful, beautiful poem, built wondrously on Koestler's foundations. Even the found relinearization of the prose - "One does not think at a given moment/ I am/ Going/ To be a traitor/ One slides into treason by degrees" - is magnificent. Nadeshda's story, and the story of her betrayer, is made more compelling by the imagined dialogue, the dual soliloquies of sadness and finality.

[Maureen]

Marvelous, Stacy.